Small
by sinemoras09
Summary: No man is an island. AU. Kakashi, Obito. Gen. No spoilers.


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_I go from loving to not loving you,  
From waiting to not waiting for you  
My heart moves from cold to fire._  
_

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1.

There are flowers in the aisle. Kakashi watches, petals strewn on red carpet, as the guests fall into a quiet hush, watching as the bridal party marches solemnly toward the alter.

Obito is smiling. Rin walks down the aisle, resplendent in white, and Kakashi has never seen him so happy. His face is an open plain, bright pastures and broad strokes of sunlight, but when Rin walks past him, taking the hands of her beloved, Obito's smile tightens, and only Kakashi can see the change.

xXx

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"I don't understand why she made you a groomsman," Kakashi says.

Obito is sitting at the bar. His ceremonial garb is loosened around the collar, and Obito is staring at his drink, depressed.

"She says I'm like family," Obito says.

"Well, that's good."

"She's says I'm like her goofy little brother. And I'm a month older than her."

"Well," Kakashi says, but he doesn't know what to say.

He watches Rin dance. She's laughing and the groom is holding her by the hands. Everyone is happy. Obito stands.

"Where are you going?" Kakashi says. Obito shakes his head.

"Bathroom. I can't keep watching this."

"Oi," Kakashi says, and Obito turns. "Why don't we get out of here? Go get a drink or something. There's a lot of people here and she won't care."

"I can't," Obito says. Kakashi didn't think it was possible, but Obito sounds even more depressed. "We have to pose for pictures, first."

"I thought you already took pictures," Kakashi says, and Obito tosses back a drink.

"More pictures," Obito says. "Candid pictures. I don't even know."

xXx

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2.

Kakashi remembers when Obito was rescued. Face scarred and body crushed, he could barely move, let alone walk around to take stupid wedding pictures. Kakashi watched, guilt-stricken and regretful, as Obito teetered precariously on crutuches, doing one-armed push ups and forcing himself through grueling months of rehabilitation.

They couldn't re-transplant the sharingan. It was a rush job, Rin was not experienced, but Obito wouldn't take it back, anyway. "It was a gift," Obito said, and Kakashi looked at him with disbelief. "You do better with it than me, anyway. And I still have my other eye."

"I guess," Kakashi said, but he still felt guilty, but Obito just shrugged and smiled.

Kakashi visited him in physical therapy, more out of guilt than anything else; at first, Obito was annoyed, but soon enough he warmed up to Kakashi the way he warmed up to everything else: "Kakashi!" Obito said. He limped toward him, his physical therapists following. "You came!"

Kakashi rolled his eyes, taking stock of the gym equipment surrounding them. "Of course I came. I can't help it if you're a stupid half-rate nin. Someone needs to make sure you do your exercises right."

"You better watch," Obito said. "Now that I have my sharingan, I'll get even stronger than you!"

"Doubt it," Kakashi said. And the physical therapists shook their heads and wrote on their clipboards.

xXx

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The look on Obito's face was unmistakable. He was doing a good job of disguising it, but Kakashi had known him long enough to recognize it: hurt and confusion and surprise. His mouth opened, then closed again, before he swallowed, trying to compose himself.

"Never?" Obito said, and the doctor looked at him, sympathetically.

"You have one eye," the doctor said. "You only have one arm."

"But I work hard," Obito said. "I have the sharingan now, I can train, I can-"

"You're unfit," the doctor said, gently. "Son. I know how important being a shinobi is for you. But as it stands right now, in the physical condition that you're in, that would be next to impossible."

Kakashi glanced back at him. Obito was blinking, hard.

Later, Kakashi found him sitting at the riverbank. He sat gingerly beside him, watching as he rested his chin on his knees.

"It's okay," Obito said, finally. "I don't have to be a shinobi. There's lots of things I'm good at. I'm good at drawing," Obito said. "I only have one eye now, so I don't have to worry about depth perception, and...and I'm good at...good at skipping stones-" and he tossed a stone into the water. It sank, pathetically. "I mean, not all the time, good, but I can use my left hand now, and not everyone is ambidextrous. I mean, if I had another arm, I would be ambidextrous. And there's...there's lots of things I could do, and-"

"Obito," Kakashi said, and Obito's face crumbled. And Kakashi didn't make fun of him for starting to cry.

xXx

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3.

He lives just on the outskirts of the Uchiha quarter. It takes a little bit to visit him - Obito lives so far out, he's practically in the forests by the periphery - and when Kakashi comes nearer, he can hear it: little kids making fun of him, laughing and taunting.

"Half-man Obito, nobody likes you! Why don't you just go and leave."

"Shut up," Obito says, and the kids taunt him more.

"You're not even an Uchiha! You're a fake Uchiha! You don't even have a sharingan!"

"I do too have a Sharingan," Obito says, and he activates it.

"We do too!" the kids say, and Kakashi doesn't need to activate his to see how pissed off Obito looks right about now, because these kids can't be more than eight years old, and they're already twice the ninja Obito will ever be.

"Hey," Kakashi says, and the kids turn. "Get out of here!" And the kids run away, laughing and shrieking.

Kakashi turns. Obito is breathing hard, red-faced and humiliated. Kakashi shakes his head.

"What's wrong with kids these days?" Kakashi says, and Obito glares.

"Shut up," Obito says, and Kakashi rolls his eyes.

They walk to the civilian quarter of the village. Kakashi knows how Obito likes it better here, where people don't know him. Though by shinobi standards he is a cripple and practically dead weight, to the civilians Obito is still an able worker, able to heft heavy bags of rice and grain and help around the village center. "You should just move here," Kakashi says, and Obito glances up at him, frowning. "It would make the most sense. You work here. You'd probably be happier." But Obito shakes his head.

"It's politics," Obito says. He taps the side of his temple, knowingly. "An Uchiha with a working sharingan. I have a bloodline limit, even if I don't really use it."

Later, it's only by chance Kakashi sees it: not snot-nosed genin but Uchiha around their age, shouting and kicking. They're fighting, and they take turns beating him: a punch to the gut. A kick, the sickening crack of contact against his ribs.

"Oi!" Kakashi says, and he jumps in. They're Uchiha but they're just chuunin, and Kakashi dispatches with them, easily.

"What do you think you're doing?" Obito says. The side of his face is bleeding.

"You were getting beat up! I just wanted to help-"

"I could have taken care of myself!" Obito says, and Kakashi is shocked at how angry he is. How bitter.

"Just mind your own business," Obito says, and he moves gingerly, limping and clutching at the stump by his shoulder.

xXx

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Sometimes, Rin comes to visit him. Obito doesn't say much about it, but from what he hears from Rin, their visits don't constitute much more than the two of them, sitting together at a cafe and chatting, quietly. Sometimes Rin will tell him about her husband and the goings-on about her day; other times, she'll tell him about a particularly grueling mission, the people she's treated, and the myriad types of wounds.

Kakashi doesn't have to be there to know Rin's visits are a lifeline. Obito clings to it. He's happy that she's happy, but whenever she leaves, he just looks lonelier, more withdrawn. The day Rin tells them that she's pregnant, Kakashi says nothing, watching as Obito stutters and smiles and hugs her a little bit too long.

"You know, " Kakashi says one day, almost out of the blue. "You're not that bad looking." And Obito stares at him as if he's got two heads.

"I mean," Kakashi says, and he rubs his neck, frowning. "Objectively speaking."

"Thanks. I guess," Obito says, and Kakashi shakes his head.

"No, Obito, listen. There's lots of girls out there. You're a nice guy. A good catch! There's probably someone out there for you. Like what about that nice civilian girl at the shop you work at? What about her?"

"She's married," Obito says, and his good eye slides upward, meeting his. "And besides, I'm not that lonely. You make it sound like all I do is sit around at night, all pathetic and sad and crying over Rin's picture."

"You don't?" Kakashi says.

"Shut up."

"But seriously," Kakashi says. He leans back, hands in his pockets and looking up into the sky.

"You're a good guy, Obito. Any girl would be lucky to have you."

And Obito ducks his head and smiles.

xXx

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4.

The years pass. The Uchiha children grow increasingly afraid of him.

"Don't go near old man Obito," they say, and they stare out into the forest, speaking in hushed whispers. "I hear he has half a face."

"I heard that he would eat you."

"I heard that he'll steal your eyes!"

"Kids," Kakashi says, but Obito says nothing. They're older now; Kakashi has his own bickering little team and Obito is quiet now, the lean comma of his body unmoving, silent. Kakashi can understand why the children are afraid of is a hardness to him, the shaggy mop of black hair covering the slash marks of scars marring the side of his good eye.

He knows how hard it's been. He's seen how the villagers look at him, at first with humor and kindness and then thinly veiled pity, and how the years had passed he'd grown more invisible; he knows how lonely it must get. Even among the civilians, where Obito arguably could better fit, he's something of a stranger, an anomaly, the stuff of hushed whispers and frightened looks.

"Honey, don't talk to him," one woman says, and Kakashi sees how the civilian woman hides her child as if Obito were some kind of thug, a murderer or rapist or worse. But Obito just shrugs, walking slowly.

"It's funny," Obito says, and he grins, wryly. "I can't even make hand seals, but they're all afraid of me, here."

"Why won't they talk to you?" Kakashi says, and Obito shrugs.

"Because I have the Evil Eye." He smiles, tapping the side of his sharingan. "It activated by accident. It's not enough that I'm scary looking with scars and one arm. I have a scary eye too. It can't be helped."

"I see," Kakashi says, but he doesn't really understand.

xXx

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5.

Sometimes, Kakashi thinks back to the first time he saw him: in the middle of a fight, some loud, annoying kid picking fights with the bigger boys hanging out at the corner.

It wasn't that Obito didn't have friends, exactly. It was just that the Uchihas avoided him, because he clearly sucked and he brought down their badass reputation; the non-Uchihas started off intimidated by him. When they got to know him, though, they got annoyed by him, and told him bluntly so.

At twelve-years-old, Kakashi knew who was the runt of the litter, who was the most awkward and who was probably used to blustering his way through it. When Obito yelled, it had the same effect as a drop-kick dog yapping at wolves, and the end result was pretty much the same.

"You were awful," Kakashi says, and Obito bites back a laugh. Back then, Kakashi was more or less annoyed to find out the third member of his genin team was a third-rate, no-finesse, crybaby wannabe elite, doing more shouting and yelling than actual fighting, but Obito worked hard and trained all day, even if his katas waffled somewhere between awful and abysmal.

But now Obito is quiet, and Kakashi can't help but notice the change. The line of his jaw has tightened. His voice, which was once loud and grating, is low and sonorous, and often Obito says nothing but a few choice words, waiting to speak between the lengths of measured silences.

They've both changed a lot since then. He remembers how after the throng of boys stopped rushing toward the commotion by the jungle gym and after the shouts of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" died down, how it wasn't long before the Uchiha kid was body-slammed into the nearest swingset, and how Kakashi watched, bored and oddly transfixed at the trainwreck of a classmate he had just met a few hours earlier.

xXx

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The day Obito found out was the worst.

Obito didn't know. Kakashi should have warned him, but now it was too late. Rin sipped her tea and Obito stared daggers at his teacup, clenching his hand, involuntarily.

"When is the wedding?" Obito asked. His voice sounded hollow but Obito smiled, tight. Kakashi could see it, the lengths to which he was going to try to keep control.

"A few months from now," Rin said. She smiled, tucking back a strand of hair from her ear. "He reminds me of you, actually. He's really nice. I think you'd really like him."

"That's good," Obito said. He nodded. "Congratulations." And he stood.

"Obito."

Obito stopped. Rin was looking at him, concerned.

"I'm happy for you," Obito said, quietly. "Really. I'm happy that you're getting married. He's a really lucky guy."

Rin's smile was bright, genuine. She gently touched his arm.

"It was good to see you," Rin said, and Obito looked away quickly, but not before Kakashi could see the hurt in his eyes.

xXx

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6.

He finds him at the same spot by the river, silent and looking out at the horizon. It is dark now, and in the murky half-light, Kakashi can just barely make out the lines of Obito's face.

"Are you okay?" Kakashi says and he sits next to him. Moonlight trickles, and Kakashi's eyes slowly adjust until he can see the size and shape of things in the darkness, and how the sky seems to bleed into the canopy of trees.

"No," Obito says. And then, "I'm not."

Kakashi says nothing, looking at his hands.

"Why am I here?" Obito said, and his voice is low. "I can't do anything. I have no one. I have no family, I hardly have any friends. What have I accomplished in this life? Has anybody ever really benefited from my existence?"

"I have," Kakashi says, and Obito looks at him. "So has Rin. We would have died if it weren't for you."

"My one crowning achievement," Obito says, and he laughs softly, a sharp, bitter sound. "I haven't done anything else. I'm halfway through this life, and what do I have to show for it? I'm going to die like this," Obito says, and one eye turns upward, searching his. "My existence is worthless," Obito says. "Trash."

"That's not true," Kakashi says, but Obito shakes his head.

"No," Obito says. "I know what it is. You're Kakashi of the Sharingan. The Copy Ninja. I'm Old Man Uchiha Obito, half a man. My existence is worthless.

I have no one. And I'm going to die alone."

xXx

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7.

He walks into the village center, alone and walking in the darkness. Around him, the buildings are dark, and there is no light except for the pale streaks of moonlight that filters through the clouds.

Kakashi follows him. He trails him, just a few paces beyond Obito's line of sight. He's never seen Obito like this. It worries him, and he's so wrapped up in his thoughts that he doesn't even notice the place where Obito stops, pushing the hood of his cloak back and looking upwards.

He is standing in front of Rin's house. The lights are on but the curtains are drawn, and dimly Kakashi can see the shapes of people moving, slightly. A family, laughing. The light from the house casts a warm yellow glow that bleeds out into the darkness, and Obito watches, silently. Sadly.

Inside, the people laugh. And Obito turns, walking silently away.


End file.
